Online sponsorships are used in the retail industry to help maximise and connection with a wider audience. This is important because without these sponsorships they wouldn’t be able to enter new markets and generate a buzz.
An example of a sponsorship being used is the H&M summer campaign featuring Beyoncé. Using celebrities and models to promote their products gives them an advantage over its competitors and helps them to engage with their target market.
One of the best ways to audit influencers and interact with their market is the reach-act-convert-engage model. This is a framework which is used in businesses to create an online presence and build relationships. There are four different stages that are required in order for it to work effectively. It can be identified that “Engagement has a positive effect on the audience’s perception of sponsor activities” (Researchgate, 2012).
Reach: This key element builds awareness and creates a web presence. By including influential people into campaigns and creating a unique approach to advertising goods and services, it can attract
a whole new fan base or unique visitors. The advantage of this is that influencers already have a large following so their contribution to the sponsorship would target a new market that was not there before. “Sponsorships provide a way to add concreteness in the minds of the audience. For instance “among brands, some names are more concrete and others more abstract. Pizza Hut is concrete. An image of a pizza quickly comes to mind and we easily understand it’s in a hut (house or building). But, think about words like Verizon or Aon. Absent associations with other objects or words, consumers would have no idea what these brands mean”. (Researchgate, 2012).
Figure from: (Google.co.uk, 2017)
Businesses in the retail industry use this method to audit because they can get an insight on what their target market is interested in and who influences them by exploring competitor’s websites. By reaching out to their audience and interacting with them they are able to connect with the relevant celebrities and models in order to fulfill the wants and needs of their market, which is crucial. This would be evaluated through surveys and analysing the results of their rival’s social media which would contribute choices being made.
Act: This method would concentrate more on the how often people would engage with the influencers on the advert. For example how much page visits would this specific campaign get based on the influencer and whether it is working in an effective way and receiving positive feedback. This would be measured by analysing specific keywords and how often people look up the influencers, for example, hashtags or through Instagram blogs in order to find what influencers the audience engages with. Another way to measure this would be through google analytics to see which demographic the influencer is interacting with.
Convert: This part will show the progression from the first two steps and give a direct lead on how sales are doing and the revenue aspect of the products and services. The results would be measured in terms of profit and how much of an impact the influencer had on sales. This can be analysed by comparing their results to their competitors. From research it also states that “the most desirable measure from a sponsor’s perspective is impacted on sales, which may be expressed as: (i) increases in traffic at retail points of sale; (ii) number of new sales leads created; or (iii) actual increase in sales associated with a sponsorship”(Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Engage: Finally, the engagement is what will maintain the relationship between customers and fans in order to achieve the goals. From research, it states that “the most frequently used sponsorship measure is media equivalency values. These frequently inflate the real value of media coverage. Further, this approach is fundamentally conceptually flawed because it measures only the extent of media output and offers no insight as to whether people absorbed the message” (Taylor & Francis, 2017). Nevertheless, it can be seen that “Customer engagement turns customers into fans who remain wedded through ups and downs in intimate enduring relationships and even proselytize for the product, brand, or company. When problems arise in relationships with customer engagement, they are likely to be resolved through passive acceptance or constructive discussion rather than venting or disengagement” (emeraldsight).
References
Emeraldinsight.com. (2017). Customer engagement, buyer‐seller relationships, and social media | Management Decision | Vol 50, No 2. [online] Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/00251741211203551 [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017]. In text (Emeraldinsight.com, 2017)
Google.co.uk. (2017). Image: R.A.C.E. Process Strategy Guides Your Digital Marketing Tactics. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://webdirexion.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/RACE-framework-KPIs.jpg&imgrefurl=https://webdirexion.com/online-marketing/how-r-a-c-e-process-strategy-impacts-digital-marketing&h=601&w=775&tbnid=Sz29DSEABNzS7M:&tbnh=160&tbnw=206&usg=__mIUhR6pOzTad-L4Z1StiCxhvEx8%3D&vet=10ahUKEwj7gLSb1-nXAhWBRxoKHWTMD48Q9QEILTAA..i&docid=I17z8rRAPkpbpM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7gLSb1-nXAhWBRxoKHWTMD48Q9QEILTAA [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].
Researchgate. (2012). How Sponsorships work the sponsorship engagement model. [online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262895266_How_Sponsorships_Work_the_Sponsorship_Engagement_Model [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].